Identity Quotes

Know thyself. Nothing in excess. The Self is required to balance the Self.

Ralph Blum

Getting in touch with your true self must be your first priority.

Tom Hopkins

All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true.

David Cronenberg

The conqueror and king in each one of us is the knower of truth. Let the knower awaken in us and drive the horses of the mind, emotions, and physical body on the pathway which that king has chosen.

George S. Arundale

No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.

Eric Hoffer

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.

Eric Hoffer

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.

Chinese Proverb

Drop the idea that you are Atlas carrying the world on your shoulders. The world would go on even without you. Don't take yourself so seriously.

Norman Vincent Peale

Our concern must be to live while we're alive... to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.

Elisabeth KublerRoss

The worst thing you can do is start slow, or con yourself into thinking that you can take your time getting into a match. The curtain is up so you've got to perform.

Jack Kramer

The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.

Marshall McLuhan

Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all.

Bernard Baruch

Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.

Samuel Johnson

An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger. Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

James Baldwin

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

James Baldwin

Everything has two sides -- the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn.

Olive Schreiner

Take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me; leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy, and my plain dealing; 'tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of others or myself.

Mary Wortley Montagu, Letter, (p

In its purest sense, nicknaming is an elitist ritual practiced by those who cherish hierarchy. For preppies it's a smoke signal that allows Bunny to tell Pooky that they belong to the same tribe, while among the good old boys it serves the cause of masculine dominance by identifying Bear and Wrecker as Alpha males.

Florence King

He who thinks that he is finished is finished. How true. Those who think that they have arrived, have lost their way. Those who think they have reached their goal, have missed it. Those who think they are saints, are demons.

Henri Nouwen, The Genesee Diary

The Beatles exist apart from my Self. I am not really Beatle George. Beatle George is like a suit or shirt that I once wore on occasion and until the end of my life people may see that shirt and mistake it for me.

George Harrison